Frances Mayes

Born and raised in Fitzgerald, Georgia, Mayes attended Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and obtained her BA from the University of Florida. In 1975 she earned her MA from San Francisco State University, where she became Professor of Creative Writing, director of The Poetry Center, and Chair of the Department of Creative Writing.

Mayes has published several works of poetry: Climbing Aconcagua (1977), Sunday in Another Country (1977), After Such Pleasures (1979), The Arts of Fire (1982), Hours (1984), and Ex Voto (1995). She wrote The Discovery of Poetry, a text for readers and writers. In 1996 she published the book Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy, which was on the New York Times Best Seller list for over two years. The book is a memoir of Mayes buying, renovating, and living in an abandoned villa in rural Cortona in Tuscany, a region of Italy. A film loosely based on the book, Under the Tuscan Sun. was released in 2003, adapted by director Audrey Wells. In 1999, Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy was published, and in 2000, In Tuscany. Mayes's first novel, Swan, was published in 2002. The book Bringing Tuscany Home was published in 2004, a collaborative effort of Mayes and her husband Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes with photographer Steven Rothfeld. Another memoir, Every Day in Tuscany, was released in March 2010. The novel Women in Sunlight was published in 2019 and is in development as a film from Water's End. A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home was published in 2022 and was Long-listed for the PEN essay category.

Also a food-and-travel writer, Mayes is the author of The Tuscan Sun Cookbook and A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller (2006), narratives of her and her husband's travels in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Morocco and other countries. In 2019 she published See You in the Piazza, an ode to favorite locations, and in 2020 Always Italy, a journey to all twenty regions of Italy. That book won the Gold Medal from the SATWF Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition and the Gold for Best Travel Book by the North American Travel Journalists Association. Her books have been published in over fifty languages and many have been international best sellers.

In 2023, the cookbook Pasta Veloce was published. Now writing full-time, she and her husband, a poet, divide their time between homes in North Carolina and Cortona, Italy, where they produce Bramasole Olive Oil.

• Sunday in Another Country
• The Arts of Fire
• After Such Pleasures
• Hours
• Ex Voto
• The Book of Summer
• The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing
• Under the Tuscan Sun
• Bella Tuscany
• A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller
• Every Day in Tuscany
• In Tuscany (with Edward Mayes and photographs by Bob Krist)
• Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style from the Heart of Italy (with Edward Mayes and photographs by Steven Rothfeld)
• The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from My Italian Kitchen (with Edward Mayes and photographs by Steven Rothfeld)
• Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir
• Swan
• Shrines: Images of Italian Worship (photographs by Steven Rothfeld)
• Women in Sunlight
• See You in the Piazza
• Always Italy
• A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home
• Pasta Veloce (Susan Wyler co-author and photographs by Steven Rothfeld)

• Frances Mayes website
• Frances Mayes at IMDb